I mean, the "Huge Blast" costs 800 salvage, you would need to start a game with four Crash Coins to get that.

Already what is in the store is random to a degree, even if you unlock it you cannot be sure it will be there, and the rather ridiculous pricing of some of the upgrades just makes it more difficult.

I personally think there shouldn't be any upgrades that cost more than 500 salvage, thus if you started a game with four crash coins, you could at least get two desired upgrades if they were available.

Or maybe make it so you could use a crash coin in the current season to buy a Upgrade outright rather than using salvage.

Personally i think the upgrade system is perfect. If you finish a season with 10 crash coins, that means starting with a few of the really good upgrades. You shouldn't have 5 upgrades at the start of a new season when you consider how plentiful upgrades are in levels and how much salvage you can get from enemies. Since it's got roguelike elements, risk/reward is a huge driving factor. ultimately your mid to late season loadoat should be influenced more by your current season's performance than last season's.

Also, you should rarely feel comfortable with your equipment. Scarcity makes you work with what you have and develop different skills instead of just rolling out with every possible upgrade from the start.

Lastly, the cost of upgrades coincides well with equipment value. Huge blast is expensive because it's powerful. But you have to make a tradeoff between having money for repairs and money for upgrades because thematically you're the last starfighter on an underequipped and outgunned starship and you shouldn't be able to have it all.

What your question seems to boil down to is "Why isn't Galak-z easier?".

Not everything is open to us all of the time because this isn't call of duty and there are no persistent loadouts. The game, for me, stays fun because you must learn and adapt to non-ideal builds and make concessions to not buy health in order to save for electroshock bullets or hellfire missiles or whatever. The exhilaration of surviving a whole season with one health is nuts. Having what you want all the time is how you get into a rut and become bored.

Not being able to afford things is a great incentive to explore more of the levels, to fight those risky enemy squad compositions and to forego repairs to save up. It is a constant give and take that would be undone if the economy shifted from where it is to a welfare system.

You shouldn't be rewarded for participating, you should be rewarded for excellence.

We seem to have a difference of opinion, for one, how would making all upgrades at max cost 500 make things easier, as that is still a significant sum, and the upgrades that have increased power often have their own inherent balances, such as slower rounds, or slower rate of fire.

And the store changes what is available, so as you unlock more things with blueprints, being able to pick and choose a specific load out every time would become more difficult, even if you could afford the upgrades more easily.

And if a person makes it through a full season without paying any crash coins for a mission retry, don't think that is worth having the ability to pick some abilities?

Making everything free would make it a welfare system, what I think would be better is to make things slightly more affordable, as you can go a entire map and kill every enemy and not make it up to 800 Salvage on some maps.

I agree with theologians, the system works because you are constantly scraping just enough together to get the best build possible. Any changes at all to the current system would have a detrimental effect on the game.